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Tuesday, 5 July 2016

Musing Mondays - Fun book titles & what I'll read next

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

I’m currently reading…

Up next I think I’ll read…

I bought the following book(s) in the past week…

I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…

I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…

I can’t wait to get a copy of…

I wish I could read ___, but…

I blogged about ____ this past week…

Up next I think I'll (re-)read:

I found out a few weeks ago, thanks to the ALA Think Tank group on Facebook that an author I've liked since I was a teenager passed away on June 15 of this year. Lois Duncan, known as the "Queen of Teen Suspense" is probably best remembered for being the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mr. Griffin which both had pretty well known Hollywood films made based off of them; I Know What You Did Last Summer in 1997 and Teaching Mrs. Tingle in 1999. It was actually those films that led me to her books, I've never read the former but I did read the latter, and two of her other books as well. I preferred the two others to Killing Mr. Griffin. The other two books of Duncan's that I read and enjoyed are Gallows Hill and Daughters of Eve.

So in honour of her passing, I've decided that I'll re-read both of these books. Reading these also has the added benefit of fulfilling a couple of the requirements for my 2016 reading challenges. Gallows Hill fulfills the "read a book you haven't read since high school" requirement from the POPSugar challenge, because the only time I read it was back when I was in high school, which means it's been at least 12 years since I read it. Daughters of Eve on the other hand I've reread at least once because I find it a very fascinating read; it fulfills the "read a book with a main character that has a mental illness" requirement of the BookRiot Read Harder challenge. One of the main characters in this book suffered from battered child syndrome, though it's never explicitly mentioned, her circumstances and actions do make it pretty obvious.

I won't be reading these books right, right away though because I'm still in the middle of my Gena Showalter read-a-thon, in which I am reading my way through all of the books in her 3 paranormal romance novel series. I am up to The Nymph King in her Atlantis series, so I am nearly done. Once I finish up with Gena, I'll definitely be going on to these two, at least that's the plan for now!

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: What is your favourite book title?

Oh man, this is hard for me, I have been known to LOVE a good title, especially if it's punny, funny, any sort of play on words or amusing for any other reason. So I'm just going to do a grid of some titles that I really love and then I'll do a numbered list with a reason for each.

1. And Another Thing... (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #6) by Eoin Colfer - I wholeheartedly think Douglas Adams would have approved of the title of this final book in his beloved Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Published 17 years after Adams's last entry in the series And Another Thing as a title just perfectly fits the humour of these books. I can just picture Arthur Dent on a 17 year tirade with his finger in the ear shouting "And another thing!...".

3. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick - The classic sci-fi book with the classic sci-fi existential question for a title. Seriously, what do androids dream about? If they do dream, and if they have trouble sleeping, I bet Dick is right and they count electric sheep to fall asleep.

4. Deadpool Killustrated (Deadpool Killogy #2) by Cullen Bunn - It's Deadpool so of course it has a fun title, just some simple Deadpool-y word play here with killustrated for illustrated but I love it because it's perfection.

5. The Loving Daylights by Lynsay Sands - When I saw this on the shelf in Walmart I HAD to have it purely because of the title. I am a big Bond movie fan, and Timothy Dalton is my favourite Bond. I absolutely love both Licence to Kill, and this book's namesake The Living Daylights so of course I had to have, and read, a book whose title was a play on that film's title. Also, it happens to be an absolutely FANTASTIC read, so much fun.

6. Do Unto Otters: A Book About Manners by Laurie Keller - This is a fantastic children's book that uses Otters and fantastic word play (as evidenced by the title) to teach children the golden rule of treating others the way you want to be treated. It really doesn't get much better.

7. Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg - Okay, so I haven't actually read this one yet, it came in one of my Nerd Blocks and it *IS* on my 2016 TBR list because it fulfills a challenge. But seriously though I love the title of Pegg's autobiography. The obvious word play here on ne'er-do-well used to great effect because he is in point of fact a nerd who has done very well for himself indeed. Double A++ on the title good sir, I hope the book amuses me just as much if not moreso.